Coolant

[AlanD]

Ran out AGAIN this morning so phoned up VW to get her booked in. Had a chat with the service guy there and when I told him that I had just been topping it up with water he recommended that I go the Halfords a purchase some proper coolant and top it up with that as the ratio of coolant:water will have been messed up by me adding just water (I've added about 2 pints of water over the 3 times shes run out). This sounds fair enough to me, Im very vague on this topic, does anyone have anything else to add? Im assuming this VW chap knows what this talking about (lololol).

[BradHarris]

Have you checked that your cooling fans working ?
If not, coolant can boil and vent from the header tank and empty it.
Happend to me when stood in traffic - turned out to be a knackered fan.
But then I did get the overheat warning light to indicate something was wrong - have you had that ?

[Top Cat]

Alan i doubt your doing any harm just adding water, but IMO it is correct advice to keep the mix right with the weather changing 

[AlanD]

Have you checked that your cooling fans working ?
If not, coolant can boil and vent from the header tank and empty it.
Happend to me when stood in traffic - turned out to be a knackered fan.
But then I did get the overheat warning light to indicate something was wrong - have you had that ?

Nah, shes not overheating, just running low on coolant. Bought some coolant now so just going to see how it goes. Fingers crossed it wont happen again.

[rskardon]

Hi there,

My Gti was experiencing the exact same problem, i took it to one dealer and they did full pressure test and found no issues, it then happened twice again with a puddle under the car. I think it might have happened after some fairly full on driving so maybe is caused when things get really hot.

In any case, took it to Drift Bridge in Epsom who were excellent, they found a leak from a hose connection to the head and replaced it all under the used warranty (thankfully as the invoice came to £270, £200 of labour  )

Hopefully it will be fixed now, I have a bottle of coolant in the boot if not, seeing the number of posts on this site about this there is clearly a design fault.

Anyway, hopefully yours gets sorted too, get them to check the pipes to the head,

Cheers,

R

[AlanD]

Cheers mate.

I am 100% fully expecting this to be covered by my warranty should I need to take it to VW.

[gazbutmk5gti]

Cheers mate.

I am 100% fully expecting this to be covered by my warranty should I need to take it to VW.

Think I posted here before, I had this exact problem on my first mk5 GTi, pressure tested by dealer no problems found, it did it a couple of times then it never happened again, very strange

[stealthwolf]

This should be a reminder to everyone to check their fluid levels regularly. I do mine weekly.

[gazbutmk5gti]

Your DIS will let you know if get 2 low

[AlanD]

Me again. I pooped into Halfords on my way home to some coolant in case I ran out again. I then checked my coolant and found it to again be below the minimum level, however every other time Its warned that its below the limit. Whats this all about? Going to top it up with the new coolant and see how I get on.

 I am correct in saying it should not be this low?



Whats the ideal level to top it up to?